A Climbing Betty's journey to find love & strength in the mountains

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Archives for November 2011

Last night, I went to open gym at my local Crossfit. My adrenals are not in any shape to be able to handle 15 minute met-cons, so I generally skip the WODs and stick with the strength work. Nice, slow strength progression with lots of rest in between max lifts. This was pretty easy to do last night in particular because the box was packed! All present were women (except our coach) and it was awesome to see so many ladies sweatin’ it up and moving some pretty burly weight!

Crossfit-style workouts did a lot to help bump up my climbing game during the early fall. Funny thing about having increased strength for climbing- its makes the climbing more fun! When you’ve got the guns to hang on a little longer, or try a harder grade climb, well, climbing can become down-right addicting! The increased strength & endurance also did wonders for my leading, giving me a cooler, calmer head and fewer instances of sewing-machine leg!

For various reasons (re: excuses), I’ve not been working out regularly for the last two months. However, with ski season baring down on us (maybe, I’m taking this on total faith that the earth is tilted far enough away from the sun here in the northern hemisphere for winter to happen. Its currently the end of November and today’s weather forecast is calling for highs near 60 deg F!), I decided it was finally time to get my ass in gear and start building some strength & endurance in my legs for skiing. Knowing now what seemed to help my climbing, I decided to apply the same principles for ski season training.

So here I am, at Crossfit, doing some back squats. Photo credit: Jennifer Steck

I did set a PR last night of a 125#, which isn’t going to win me any strongwoman contests, but I felt it was pretty good for only my second time ever back squatting. After completing my strength progression, I did a round of 30-20-10 box jumps to help train some dynamic power in my legs as well. And since it is nearly 60 degrees today, I threw some assisted, static pull-ups in there for good measure, just to keep my climbing strength up 🙂

Now this is what I love about Crossfit. Ladies, do not be afraid to lift heavy weights! Unfortunately, the most that typical gyms offer is a set of Nautilus-type machines that often times, are not designed for a woman’s biomechanics. This is how injuries happen! Furthermore, while there is a time and place for doing isolated muscle movements (if you’re a bodybuilder for example), what I’ve learned from my training in anatomy and kinesiology is that there is no such thing as a muscle moving in isolation in real life! The buzz word in Crossfit circles is “functional movements.” Now that term can be, and is, debated endlessly. But a squat is what I would call a functional movement. Why? Because you are moving multiple muscle groups in a way very near to a situation you would use in real life- there’s something on the ground and you need to pick it up. How do you accomplish this? You either bend over at the waist with your knees bent a little and then press up (deadlift!) or you squat down and then press up through your legs. Bonus for our fair sex- squatting is key to building the right amount of tone through the muscles of the thighs, hips and pelvis so that the muscles of the pelvic floor are the correct length and tone to do their job. And what is their job, you ask? Their job is to keep your pelvic organs where they belong- in your pelvis! Incontinence & prolapse of pelvic organs are symptoms that the pelvic floor is not doing its job. So if you pee when you sneeze, you need to squat! (Note: I don’t want to get in to a technical discussion of the biomechanics here. But if you are interested in learning more, I highly recommend surfing on over to http://restorativeexercise.com/ and purchasing the “Down There” DVD or the No More Kegels online course. Katy Bowman is an absolute wiz at the biomechanics of a woman’s pelvis. She probably knows a thing or two about a man’s as well.)

But I digress. What I love about Crossfit is that you can lift like this here. They actually have heavy weight plates, lots of bars and floors that you can drop weight on to if you need to dump them. In contrast, gyms these days seem focused on cardio & toning. Both are useless in my opinion. 30 minutes on the treadmill a day will probably result in just enough weight loss to keep you shelling out $10-$25-$45 bucks a month to keep walking on that treadmill 30 minutes every day, literally, going nowhere. And what about toning? If you want to build muscle, build some freakin’ muscle! Lift something heavy!!! If you’re a women, unless you are taking anabolic steroids or testosterone injections, it is physically impossible to get “big” lifting heavy. (I promise, the other ladies present at Crossfit last night were all devastatingly good-looking and they were moving some big weight!) You will however, get more tone and actually develop some useful strength in the process. Which brings me back to my squat. Do you ever watch people ski? They are essentially in a squat position the entire time they are going downhill. Squatting helps train the strength & endurance to hold this position during long runs. Meaning more runs, with less pain at then end of them. Which means MORE FUN!

Another blogger I follow had a post this week about how she finally got over hating her thighs. I think it’s common for women to focus on a part of their body they don’t like, which is really a waste of energy. Better to switch focus to what that body part does for you and how amazing our bodies are in general.

1. Take note of other athletic women. Competitive athletic women. Downhill skiers, mountain bike racers and anyone else who’s race uniform involves at least some amount of spandex stretched across their arse. Compare this to the waifs on the catwalk. Notice that women who actually do something with their bodies besides act as stand-in coat hangers have *gasp* muscles!

2. Observe your profile in a mirror. Slip on a pair of high heeled shoes. Observe your profile again. Notice how standing on your tippy toes pushes up the calf & butt muscles. Now you know the real reason these foot torture devices were invented: to give shape to the shapeless. Rejoice that your ample thighs and butt give you this desirable shape without foot pain, calluses and bunions.

3. Take up backcoutry skiing. Feel your thighs and gluts burn with lactic acid from skinning up and skiing down. Better yet, learn tele- free the heal and feel the burn. You’ll learn very quickly that there is no way you can have this much fun without strong quads & gluts. You’ll beg to go to the gym and have your legs torched by set after set of back squats, deadlifts, and lunges till your quads rip out of a pair of shorts like the Hulk.

I think winter has officially begun somewhere north of where I currently am. All the local ski resorts have pushed back their opening dates, hoping for colder weather to insure their snowmaking efforts are not in vain. Meanwhile a foot or more has fallen on the Daks and the resorts in the Green Mountains. So while most folks are planning to spend the Thanskgiving holiday with their loved ones, I’m hoping to hit the slopes.

One problem with this plan.

My body has betrayed me, given up the good fight and given in to the dreaded rhinovirus, aka the common cold. At least I hope that’s all it was. Ironically it was my obsession with skiing that got me sick in the first place.

How, pray-tell, was that you say?

Ski porn, my friends.

Yes, the last two weeks while the hubby was away in Vegas, I kept some fast & loose company of my own, namely Warren Miller flicks with some very fast skiers on some very loose pow-pow. (And here you were thinking of something much dirtier, weren’t you?) Yes, instead of going to bed at a timely hour, I would instead stay up much later into the night, awash in cold sweat watching ski porn. Sometimes, just watching wasn’t enough, so I sought to engage even more of myself by visiting forums of the equally obsessed and scouring the internet for deals on toys, or um, gear. The problem was made even worse when I would forgo eating nutritonally balanced meals for quick take out so I could spend even more time indulging my powder fantancies.

In short, I had it bad.

And it caught up with me. Too much stress, too many late nights and too few vitamins coalesced into a whopping cold two days ago. Finally it would seem, I looked as strung out as I felt. The white powder finally got the best of me.

Somewhere up north a bunch of that beautiful white powder is falling. Will I get a hit of it this weekend or will I have to sit it out this weekend, instead learning a hard lesson about delayed gratification???

“Don’t spend money on gear, spend money on plane tickets.” solo expedition kayaker (and grandmother) Audrey Sutherland, who has paddled more than 8,000 miles around the world.

It’s November and there is a cold drizzle falling outside. Despite my pleading entreaties to the weather gods, rock climbing seems to be officially over here in the Northeast. With rock season over, its time to box up my cams and send them to Black Diamond to be reslung. The original nylon slings seem to be in good shape, but at the ripe old age of 8 years, the prudent thing to do would be to have them replaced, fresh and ready to go for next year’s rock season.

Or perhaps, I’ll wait just a little while longer. There might be one more warm day hiding in the forecast and I don’t want to miss it if half of my rack is in SLC. Then again, if I had new cams, the newer lighter C4s, it wouldn’t matter. And with that, my inner gear whore starts the wheels turning.

Despite my determination to not let the season end just yet, a new season means a new sport. And a new sport means what else- new gear! I’ve been really looking forward to trying my hand at some backcountry skiing this winter. The one unfortunate thing about this is that a backcountry rig ain’t cheap and its hard to find that gear used, at least it is in this neck of the woods. I can rent backcountry gear up in the Daks or New Hampshire, but not locally, so it would be terribly inconvenient if I wanted to go run up the back side of Hunter in the Catskills one afternoon. Having your own gear can be very important sometimes because it just might mean the difference between doing something you love outdoors and staying at home. And as expensive as skis are, few people are blessed to have a spare rig just laying around to lend to a friend.

And there’s ice climbing. I do own ice tools, crampons and boots. My boots are a pair of Scarpa Freney’s that picked up several years ago for $100 on Sierra Trading Post. Apparently, there are very few men on the planet with a size 5 foot, or whatever the men’s equivalent of a women’s size 7 shoe may be. Because they are men’s shoes, they have a pretty funny shape. In terms of length, they are short, but since they are built on a men’s last they are wider then a women’s shoes. They look like moon boots. For a child.

They’ve gotten me this far. And considering I average less then 10 days of ice climbing a year (OK, let’s be honest, more like, less then 5 days), there is really no need for a new boot when those work perfectly well. But oh, the La Sportiva Women’s Nepal Evo GTX! How beautiful they are! I look at their thin, dainty profile in sharp contrast to my bulky moon boots and wonder if my footwork on the ice would be improved by the narrower, more streamlined boot. Perhaps, if I had better footwork, I would climb better, enjoy climbing more, therefore I would go climbing more and this is how the logic goes to justify the need to buy boots that I don’t need. Same for tools. I climb now on a hand-me-down pair of Quarks, wrapped to the hilt in grip tape by my DH, the Guide. These are perfectly serviceable for my limited forays each winter, but when I look at the new Black Diamond Fusion tools- Father, forgive me for I have sinned. I’ve had impure thoughts about purchasing those tools.

It’s in these moments that Audrey Sutherland’s words haunt my thoughts, like my own damn Jimney Cricket. I go to work everyday, getting more and more pasty as I languish under the fluorescent lights. I make money then spend it on gear & toys I’ll rarely get to use because I have to go to said job to keep making the moola. Or I could stop the insanity, learn to be content with gear & toys I do have and then spend money on plane tickets.

If only it were that simple. Plane tickets, in addition to their upfront costs also require time away from work. No work, no pay. The hidden cost of the trip is the lost revenue. In this way, the gear is cheaper. And then let’s not forget the added bonus of it sitting on the floor next to the door, silently mocking me each time I run out said door, late for work again.

It’s a fine line between having the right gear that let’s you get out more and helps you enjoy the experience more when you do get out, and overdoing it on having the latest & greatest simply because it is the latest & greatest. Where that line is, I believe, is different for different people. DH, the Guide, for instance, has more of need for those shiny new, light-weight C4s then I do. So each season, I work on vanquishing that inner gear whore and instead focus on getting out and enjoying the sport itself with Audrey Sutherland on my shoulder of course.

Every gear retailer has a blog now. Every sponsored athlete seems to have one too. And then there are the obsessed masses who must write about climbing between once a month climbing outings in order to keep the adrenaline rush going. Junkies.

I suppose the sheer fact that I am sitting in front of a computer, writing this on a Monday morning while I’m supposed to be doing my 9-5 puts me squarely in that third category.

So why put more Monday-morning-my-weekend-was-so-awesome-wish-I-was-still-climbing-and-not-at-this-lousy-job drivel out in the blogosphere?

Because if you’re reading this, you are probably one of us. One of the weekend warriors that lives for Friday afternoons when you can throw all of your gear in the back of the car and VAMMOOSE!

Because if you’re reading this, you need this. You need it like a smack fiend needs their next hit. You went climbing this weekend and got to experience that delicious Eden where you lived like you once were- exhilarated and free, in nature. You got home Sunday night with a big grin on your face, at peace. Then you woke up this morning and went to work, crashing back to the reality of responsibilities like bills, jobs & kids.

Because, especially if you are a woman and a climber, you probably struggle mercilessly with fear and self-doubt. Not that these struggles are unique to either women or climbers in general. Rather, that women climbers seem to have a unique dichotomy of experiencing climbing as both incredibly self-affirming and incredibly self-effacing. Sometimes at the same time.

My husband, a professional rock climbing guide, called me this morning from Red Rocks. There were several parties ahead of him & his partner on the route they did yesterday, so he spent a lot of time hanging out at the belays with the second from the party ahead of them. He described her as a cute, tall, blonde chick who was a strong climber. He learned that she use to lead 5.11 trad climbs. When asked why she wasn’t swinging leads on this 5.8 climb with her partner, she told him that she stopped leading after she started climbing with a group of women who climbed even harder then her.

This apparently led to a punctuated conversation at each subsequent belay about what it is about women climbers and how they can feel so threatened by other women climbers. Or, more exactly, why we are so quick to compare ourselves to other women climbers and deem ourselves unworthy. How that feeling plays that out is unique to each woman. Some, like this woman, choose to give up something. Others find excuses to mean or harsh to these women, trying to bring them down to their own level.

Earlier in the week, I was climbing with a friend who had pretty much given up on climbing this summer. She had a litany of legitimate sounding reasons- a pretty serious fall earlier this season, scheduling conflicts with preferred partners etc., but if you stripped away all the “fluff” at the heart of it, she doubted herself and her climbing abilities. So she avoided the issue by not climbing at all.

I suspect there is more then three of us out there (for those having trouble with the math, I’m including myself in the total count) that experience this place. This place of desperate passion for the sport of climbing that drives us so hard to achieve and yet, the failure to achieve will cause us to give up way too easily.

For those of you who have ever experienced this place, or who feel like you live in this zip code, welcome. I hope this blog can be a refuge for those struggling to find again the joy of climbing when you feel like you’re ready to give up on climbing altogether.